[godelski]

So first off, remember that the people taking out the loans are typically between 17 and 20. I don't know about you, but when I was 18 I was a fucking idiot. I mean I still am, but more so back then. I would be surprised if you weren't (and you probably aren't even the median case!). Also consider that a lot can happen in 4 years, especially at that age. Your interests typically rapidly change, you learn more about who you are, and you may underestimate your future earnings (especially given that schools tell you that you'll earn so much because of your degree and their connections). But there's some other issues.

- Interest rates have gone up

- Cost of schools have risen

- The government holds most student debt

- It is still usually a good deal to get an education, but the deal is rapidly becoming less of one (the value of the deal is even changing for people in the middle of education or even graduated)

- The clauses on the debt are getting stronger, being almost impossible to cancel the debt and leading to people never being able to pay off their loans.

- The loans are predatory and becoming more so (when I took mine out a decade ago I had the option to pick "fixed rate" or "variable" but that wasn't actually fixed _interest_ rate)

- Schools are promising scholarships and then not giving them (my school would constantly schedule me for meeting with the financial aid office, a requirement, the week after the deadline and wouldn't schedule me before)

- We're better understanding the major impact on our economy when a generation that is in their prime earnings age is still not consuming and instead paying off debt.

- An educated population results in a happy and effective civilization (especially if one of your main exports is technology)

I think there's a lot of good reasons that people are pissed off. Our generations specifically was told "go to college and you'll get a good job and have a stress free life." But we quickly found that going to college doesn't lead to a good job and we can't get the same things our parents did. Jobs are harder to get, they don't pay as much, and housing is insanely priced. So basically people are pissed about a lot of stuff and a whole messed up system, and most young people are either: in college, avoided it because cost, or recently graduated. Considering that, it is unsurprising that it is a major focus.

Also I should add, some bailouts work. Pretty much what people are saying here is "this has gotten out of hand. You need to bail us out so we can effectively participate in society."

[rootusrootus]

The age argument is an interesting one. Should we be redefining what the age of majority is? Because if 18 year olds aren't competent enough to make borrowing choices for college, it follows that there are plenty of other consequences they shouldn't face.

[godelski]

The barrier is always complicated. There's also other issues, like financial literacy. I come from a upper middle class and still fell prey to the "fixed interest" claim. I'm pretty sure kids from families less well off are going to fall prone to even more egregious predatory tactics. It gets complicated really fast because one of the major goals we want from education is it to provide a means to climb the socioeconomical ladder. If we use predatory tactics in any form, then we're biasing towards targeting those people even more. Beyond that, with age, it is hard for an 18 year old to conceptually understand a 10 year loan. I'd argue that you don't start to understand that magnitude till 30 (You've lived 10 years as an adult). But that's way too late to take out a school loan.

The problem comes down to a simple one and I'll put it in the form of a question (this question generalizes to a lot of other areas too btw):

Is a deal/agreement fair when one side has an elite team of lawyers and psychologists and the other team has a high school degree?

I honestly think this is a question a lot of us, especially working for big tech companies, need to internalize and address. I'm not sure there are any easy answers either, because whichever side you fall on (I'm assuming people will say "{yes,no}, but..." instead of a strict black and white answer) there are nuances that are going to play major roles and tip the scales. I'll hint at my personal answer by saying I agree with Blackstone.

As to the question of "bail us out so we can participate in society" I think that is a little different. I think the problem is that the structure has rapidly changed and become out of hand. Incentives were misaligned. We tried to create a system where everyone could get the means to attend college but that incentivized an environment that creates predatory lending and increased financial obligations (upwards of 1k% increases). There's clearly something wrong with the system. I think many people claim to have the answers but I'm sure these are all far too naive. Something this complicated isn't going to have trivial solutions.

[jhpaul]

In the US, an 18 year old is too young to drink, old enough to vote, old enough to send to war, old enough to be tried as an adult in a court of law, and too young to rent a car.

It seems our age of majority is already an arbitrary measure.

Unless students are educated in financial literacy and professional life as part of the curriculum, I'm not sure we can expect them to be making competent, experience-based decisions on the cost benefit of education on a 20+ year timescale.

And that's not to mention that many loan providers use predatory tactics, including the companies that administer federal loans.

[imtringued]

No it just means that their environment is manipulative.